Dark Skies for Cornwall

Video Credit: Sam Morell of XRT-C

On 7th July, it was officially announced that Bodmin Moor and the peripheral areas had been designated as an International Dark Skies Landscape. This was the culmination of three years’ arduous work collecting vast amounts of data which led to a comprehensive application, jointly submitted by Cornwall Council and Caradon Observatory to the International Dark Skies Association, in Tucson. Significantly, this was the first time that an Area of Outstanding National Beauty (AONB) had been successful.

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The application itself ran to 148 pages, with technical data about air clarity and the wonderfully dark night sky. It also says that ‘feedback from residents, businesses, landowners, farmers, astronomers, educators, environmental bodies and other statutory and charitable organisations has helped shape the proposals. Enthusiasm is such that there have already been calls to widen the buffer zone’.

This last point is significant, because other areas of Cornwall will find it somewhat easier to gain corresponding status for themselves by being peripheral to an already established International Dark Skies Landscape. Penryn has already stated that they wish to use the designation of Bodmin Moor to assist them with their own application, and other areas of Cornwall will also want to follow suit.

One key fact that may not be immediately apparent is the benefits that International Dark Skies status can bring to a local economy like Cornwall’s, with a significant seasonal summer tourism period.

In conversation with someone involved in the successful bid for Galloway Forest in Scotland to become an International Dark Skies park, they remarked that they also had had a reliance on summer tourism to sustain them through other times of the year, but, by focusing on using and protecting their night skies, they had seen an increase in bed-nights during Autumn, Winter and Spring; for every 1000 bed-nights pre-IDA designation, there were 2,400 bed-nights post IDA designation. This was not only good for hotels, guest houses and b&b’s, but also for the businesses providing support services and the like, and the whole local economy benefitted.

Cornwall Council say in the application that the ‘dark night sky is a tremendous natural asset’ and that ‘residents and visitors … tell us that they cherish the clarity of the sky over the moor and agree that international status would offer great potential for the local area and Cornwall’. To ‘maximise the enhancement of an International Dark Sky Landscape … we believe a true partnership approach is essential. This is central to the management plan’. They add that the designation of Bodmin Moor would become ‘an inspiration for other places. We already know that communities elsewhere in Cornwall are becoming increasingly interested in protecting the night sky and eager to see what can be achieved.’

Cornwall has a perfect opportunity to play to its strengths here. It may be that the disposable income of London and the Home Counties may exceed that of Cornwall, but their extra income can’t buy the air clarity and beautiful dark skies that we have in Cornwall.

The only way Cornwall be effectively challenged by other areas that don’t have dark sky advantages is if Cornwall manages to negate those advantages, and these come into three broad categories:

• One way would be to over-inflate the prices for staying in Cornwall. In 1999, there were stories in the press of holiday lets being offered at £5000 for eclipse week, which had a hugely negative effect.
• A second way would be to try to entice into Cornwall industries which are major air polluters, and so adversely affect the very air clarity needed for the IDA designation.
• A third way would be to increase light pollution, whether it be huge neon signs, or floodlit sports arenas, or unnecessary street-lighting in rural areas.

Our wonderful Cornish environment, plus the unstinting work of many people over the last three years, has given a real opportunity to boost the local economy, and the people for whom Cornwall is home. Let’s focus on welcoming the many Dark Skies visitors we could get if we offer them the natural night beauty of air clarity and low-level light pollution. The combination of beautiful Cornish landscapes by day, and the glories of the constellations and the Milky Way by night, should make visitors want to experience this again and again and again.

Other areas of the world have done this, and so should Cornwall.

By Mike Wilmott F.R.A.S.